Killer's release a blessing in disguise?

Life spins some strange U-turns. It now appears that the release of once-convicted serial killer Loren Herzog worked out for the best. It's a sure bet nobody saw that coming.

Michael Fitzgerald

UPDATED: 12:16 p.m., Feb. 17, 2012

Life spins some strange U-turns. It now appears that the release of once-convicted serial killer Loren Herzog worked out for the best. It's a sure bet nobody saw that coming.

On the face of it, the release of a serial killer is the most perverse outcome the criminal justice system could produce. But things work in mysterious ways.

Herzog was released after serving a reduced, 14-year plea bargained sentence. He got that break after a court in 2010 overturned his five murder convictions, and his 78-year sentence. The court ruled that investigators coerced Herzog's confession and denied him a lawyer. At the time the ruling seemed a triumph of legal sticklers over basic sanity.

Yes, I understand the rights of accused killers must be preserved for the innocent who will need them. The folks who live out in the country Herzog came from might say you don't burn down a barn to kill a mouse.

But maybe you should bend the rules when the barn is possessed by a killer rat.

Or maybe not. Maybe it's more admirable and more necessary to rise to the law when the person they benefit is a Herzog. When fear is abroad and the masses call for scalps.

Anyway, Herzog's alarming release appears to have played a direct role in getting his partner, Wesley Shermantine, to talk. And to reveal their victims' bodies.

According to the flood of stories, two bounty hunters, Leonard Padilla and Rob Dick, began investigating in 1999 when 25-year-old Cyndi Vanderheiden vanished.

But neither Herzog nor Shermantine would talk. Until Herzog's lucky day and his release.

That gave the bounty hunters a way to play Shermantine off against Herzog. Once Shermantine started talking, he reportedly became more forthcoming.

He revealed a big beef: The state seized every cent paid into his commissary fund to pay down his court-ordered restitution. Poor boy couldn't even buy himself a Butterfingers.

Shermantine's restitution balance was $18,000. He dickered for an additional $15,000 to pay for gravestones for his parents, a laptop, TV and commissary money, reports say.

And when the deal was done, he started drawing maps to the sites.

The discovery of all those bones in a rural well near Linden is beyond the pale. A reminder that civilization is just a thin layer of letters stretched over a realm of pandemonium.

But it has brought answers and a measure of peace to the victims.

"Now we can bring her home," said Paula Wheeler, one victim's mother. "It's not a sad day. It's a very happy day."

Well, if not a happy day, a small, good thing, perhaps. A candle whose modest light and feeble warmth reduces the abyss left by evil men.

Finally, the chain of events started by Herzog's release culminated in his suicide.

An inkling of doubt that Herzog's suicide was a good thing plagues the conscience. It happened outside of the system supposed to produce justice.

If he was innocent, or less guilty as he claimed, the dumb and tractable country boy who just went along as Shermantine did the killing, then perhaps he meted out a punishment beyond what he was due.

We don't entertain this thought for him. We entertain it because we know justice can never ensue from grief or lust for vengeance that blinds us to shades of guilt. Holding this thought as we lower ourselves into the darkest wells is our way of demanding a better world.

That said, it looks like Loren Herzog committed suicide because the truth of his crimes - demonic, shocking, notorious crimes - was coming to light. He knew he owed the state his death.

If that's the case, the killer got a fair judge, jury and executioner. And Shermantine sits on death row, singing like a canary. Our systems often fail, and things go awry; yet things sometimes work out.